Thank you for calling [Company Name]. If you know your party’s extension, please dial it at any time. To reach our company directory, press 1. For more information about [Company Name], press 2. If you are an existing customer, please press 3. For billing questions, press 4. To repeat menu options, press 9. For all other inquiries, press 0. 3. Language Options
“We hope you that this holiday season finds you enjoying every single minute of it. We are aware that this is the time of the year everyone is looking forward to and we are no different from you in that regard. Since we hope to spend some quality time with our families and friends, holiday closure period is ahead of us. We hope that you will enjoy the holidays just as much as we will.
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I set mine for long meetings (half a day or a whole day) or if I’m traveling. I do have clients who email about time sensitive issues and it’s better for everyone if they know I might not see their message for a few hours.
Not exactly a neutral audience, though. A number of people following the account, if not most, will be following because they share the same sense of humor. Likewise people @ed by friends.
I used to hire a lot (hundreds) of freelance writers who would each be given a deadline by which their particular project was due. As these were large projects, they typically would have several months to complete them. I soon discovered that a significant number of freelancers (at least 25% if I’m remembering correctly) would email a couple of days before their assignment was due to report the sad news that they would be missing their deadline because “someone close to [them] had just died”.
One of the only reasons I get voicemails is because our system is set up to send new voicemail messages to your email as an attached file. Now if only it would send the voicemail as a transcript, I’d be set. I don’t mind returning calls, but listening to voicemails is obnoxious, especially because people are really bad at leaving voice messages.
Setting up out of office messages removes the guesswork done by customers when a response doesn’t come back right away.
When I worked at Nightmare Small Business(tm), a coworker went on maternity leave with (privately shared among the staff, but not with the owner) the intent to give her notice at the end rather than return. She left a very professional, concise and informative out of office message. The owner proceeded to log in to her email and change the message to include saccharine references to both the pregnancy/baby and how much she “missed” being away from clients and how excited she was to return soon.
It also doesn’t help that gmail has no ability to create an OOO schedule… like why can’t I have gmail turn on the message every day at 5pm, and turn it off every morning at 8am? We have the technology!
While I am out of the office, here’s our awesome e-book on “How To Choose The Right CRM For Your Business”. It’s free; enjoy it!
I’ll add “with limited access to email and voicemail” if I’m out because of work-related stuff (back when we used to have offsite meetings!), and “with no access to email and voicemail” if I’m truly on PTO.
Having easy access to your work even when you away from the office doesn’t mean you don’t take time to disconnect and relax for a while. You deserve to take a break, muting all the mailboxes and switching off your work phone for a couple of days or weeks. However, there is a lot you should put in place before going away from your office, in the true sense.
Businesses rely on delivering excellent examples of automated reply messages to manage customer expectations and make them feel valued. However, it is recommended to follow the key ideas for creating professional auto reply messages to provide instant communication.
In general, because of my position (C suite) my OOO messages are boring and predictable. I’m out from xx date to xx date. If you need help in my absence, please contact xyz person. Otherwise, I will reply to your email upon my return. blah blah blah
It’s possible I might quote from some responses to this in an upcoming column, so please note if you don’t want me to do that with yours!
Auto-attendants with a customized holiday greeting can be a festive way to mark the occasion. If you have a retail business, create a holiday greeting to inform customers of any limited-time sales you are offering. If your office is closed for the holiday, be sure you state this in your message.
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